"We were tasked to do an exhibition in the pedestrian zone. It was in 1990, slated to open sometime in May. It was the history of Czechoslovakia. It started with the foundation; we had exhibition panels made to put on the prefab sewer segments that were a meter in diameter, Mr. Jaroš did that. We did the architecture. Where Myslbek is today, there was a stage where all the big heads from the sixties were, and it went all the way until 17 November, ending at U Hybernů. There were StB exhibits at the Hyberns - wiretap devices, and it had an atmosphere. I know I made the wire mannequins of cops with helmets and batons where you had to walk through this cordon, and I also hung them on rubber so they would dodge the people walking, and the visitors had to walk through it."
"Yeah, we used to go to Mánes, which was like the HQ or my native office, right...? That's where the commission exams and everything took place, the artists knew each other. There was the Civic Forum's coordination centre in Mánes... I actually drove some people there. At that time, they were looking for drivers for trips outside Prague because the communication with the countryside was poor, and students would come back to small towns and try to convince their parents to support it, because otherwise it couldn't happen."
"It was really bad there because there was no food in Poland by then. We decided to take a trip, but first things first. We got about fifty dollars or marks, I can't remember... And we turned that into assets in Poland at the exchange office. We were very, very rich given we were about to spend three days there. The wealth was quite useless, though, because you couldn't buy much or spend it in any good way. The only bottle we got was a half-litre or litre of vodka from the black market because there was a prohibition. They had these little stalls on the street that said "Hot Dog" where they sold mushrooms with onions, actually portabello mushrooms fried with onions shoved into a split roll. We enjoyed that quite a lot; I must say we pretty much subsisted on that for a couple of days. "
"I was at home and climbed the cherry tree, and all I could see was smoke in the city centre. The older boys in the neighborhood were grounded, they pulled out their binoculars and watched the troops. There was a hill in front of us, and now and then we could see artillery barrels or tanks that would come up to firing positions and go down again. That's the way they played... Basically there were a lot of barrels pointed at the city... They were ready."
Zoltán Czvengrosch was born into a Hungarian family living in Košice on 30 July 1960. Only Hungarian was spoken at home; he only learned Slovak in preschool and primary school. His first childhood memories include the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. Although he was only eight years old, he remembers the anxious atmosphere of fear among adults and the chaos in the city centre. He was interested in art from a young age, so he completed the School of Applied Art in Košice. Many prominent personalities who came from Prague worked at the school, having been expelled during political purges of the normalisation period. Zoltán Czvengrosch was especially influenced by photographer Ivo Gil and painter Nikolaj Feďkovič. Thanks to their support and his talent, he finished the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (UMPRUM) in Prague, graduating in architecture and scenography with Prof. Josef Svoboda in 1985. He experienced the Velvet Revolution of 1989 while serving in the military at the Army Art Studio in Prague. Despite a ban, he would leave his unit to take an active part in anti-regime events of the time: he drove students to debates in cities outside Prague, distributed revolutionary leaflets and took part in a competition for the logo of the emerging Civic Forum. In 1990, he participated in a mass-scale artistic exhibition project, Where is My Home. In 2024 he lived in Prague, running his architectural studio.
